The Cinematheque

Witches have occupied the silver screen since its inception, and our collective imagination since the dawn of civilization. The myth is present in almost every culture in the world. As Benjamin Christensen observes in Häxan, his groundbreaking 1922 film thesis on witchcraft: ​“When primitive man is confronted with something incomprehensible, the explanation is always sorcery and evil spirits.”

Häxan is one of the first moving-image works to lay out a visual language for occult cinema as we know it. Over time, witches have seen an array of interpretations on screen—defying expectations, eluding classification, and transcending genre, storytelling technique, and narrative conventions. What these depictions have in common, however, is that they feed our insatiable craving for the spiritual and the mystical, thus keeping alive the notion that maybe there is, indeed, magic at our fingertips.

This series represents a small path through these variations on a theme, featuring works by celebrated auteurs, as well as cult classics, each adding their singular twist on the lore. Grounded by the historical snapshot of the witch in Häxan, from which this series takes its title, ​“Watch Out, That Woman Has Evil Eyes” also encompasses the delightful mysteries of the great feminine in I Married a Witch, The Witches (Le streghe), and The Witches of Eastwick. No such overview would be complete, of course, without a healthy serving of evil eye and the most depraved flashes of dark magic, as seen in Dario Argento’s Inferno and turn-of-the-century game changer The Blair Witch Project, marking its 25th anniversary.

Augmenting our series is a side of short-form witchery, featuring Maya Deren’s hypnotizing Witch’s Cradle and Sebastian Duque R.’s Under Land, a Colombian documentary about two warring women whose long-standing grudge and hateful gossiping unwittingly give power to the very sinister force they are trying to excise.

Sonja Baksa
Series Curator